And you say “we can all harp on the dire consequences of the military and intel cutbacks of the '90s, but there were practically no mainstream voices arguing against those cutbacks at the time, on either the right or the left” You’re playing that down a bit Jon. You are correct they were dire consequences indeed. And this is where the problem lies. Just because there were “no voices” against it does not – in any way – give Clinton a pass. He’s supposed to LEAD. He’s supposed to be THE voice. He just went with the flow. Clinton was famous for wanting to know what polls said before he made some decisions. I want someone who is a thinker and who has convictions and who makes the smart decisions – even if there are no mainstream voices who agree. That’s a leader. He failed us in the 90’s. Bush has failed us this decade.

So who’s next – will someone step up and do what their vision and conviction tells them – regardless of what their party swine say and what “mainstream thinkers” say?

As for WTC'93, the immediate perpetrators of that crime were in fact brought to justice. It wasn't splashy, it wasn't warlike, perhaps it wasn't cathartic or vengeful enough for you, but it was real and it was effective.

And as for the CIA: First, you're overstating your case dramatically by saying there were “practically no human operators left,” and if anything Bush's CIA is far worse (bullied into misrepresenting the Iraqi threat, horrendous morale, still few Arabic speakers seven years after 9/11, etc.).

Second, in retrospect we can all harp on the dire consequences of the military and intel cutbacks of the '90s, but there were practically no mainstream voices arguing against those cutbacks at the time, on either the right or the left. It was a conservative thinker, Fukuyama, who trumpeted “the end of history” after the Soviet Union's fall.

Finally, where's your evidence that the anti-terror plan Clinton left behind was a “farce”? It's been de-classified; it's right here (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/c...). To say that Clinton's folks should have been able to thwart the 9/11 plot when it was in its infancy, in Germany's Hamburg cell and before the hijackers began their flight training in late 2000, is farcical. The time to thwart it was when they were living in the US, attending flight schools, buying plane tickets without proper ID, etc., etc.–all of which reached critical mass during the spring and summer of 2001, when Bush was dismissing terror intel reports with phrases like, “There, you've covered your ass now.”

Dismissing “Monica” as a factor in all this is what “won't fly.” The simple fact is, Republicans in this country tried to bring down the American government twice during the '90s, with the '95 shutdown and with the Monica scandal. And on a realistic political level, everything Clinton tried to do on every front during '98-'99 had to be calibrated for its impact on the rabid idiots of the Republican Congress. You can dismiss it all you want now, but you were there at the time — the scandal left Clinton with virtually no “political capital” that would allow him to do something as drastic as send a force after bin Laden.

There's plenty of blame to go around for allowing 9/11 to happen–and I'm far from a perfect Clinton apologist, because I now think (though I didn't at the time) that he should have resigned over the Monica scandal, in which case President Gore's (I sure like the sound of that) hands wouldn't have been tied and President Bush never would have happened.

But to try to place all the blame for 9/11 at Clinton's feet because he didn't send an army after bin Laden in '98 or the fall of 2000 is an ideological cul-de-sac that history won't back up.

How about WTC one in 1993 – right after Clinton got in office? Yeah, that was on our soil, and nothing was done. His “detailed plan” is a farce. And as far as “pleas from the CIA”, you mean the part of CIA that was left after being drawn down an dessimated from the Clinton years? Practically no human operators left, and a much smaller budget, during a time of the growth of A'Qaida. I'm surprised there was anyone left to plea.

That's a great “detailed plan”. You are also forgetting that the 9/11 attacks took years to plan – all under Clinton's watch. By the time Bush came in office they were way way down the road and in the final stages. Why didn't Clinton's detailed plan see them or catch them during that time? If you say “Monica” you know as well as I that won't fly.

Now overall you are still right that history will not be kind to Bush and should not be – for Iraq alone. But what we've done in Afghanistan is right, and it's still the proper mission. And unless we can get Pakistan to quell the safehaven in their tribal areas for the Taliban, it won't end. That will have t be from very tricky diplomacy because Pakistan is a very troubled and complicated country right now.

I won't go to the mattresses for Clinton on his failure to act more strongly after the embassy bombings in '98, but let's face it, the wacko conservatives had him over a barrel at the time for cheating on his wife. I don't imagine the GOP Congress would have done anything to support a more pro-active response, and would have done anything in its power to undercut him, the same way it did in ever circumstance for eight years (including the Balkans, and aren't you now ashamed of yourselves?).

The Cole bombing happened in the fall of 2000, less than 2 months before the election, which understandably left Clinton wary of acting in a way that might either swing the election or be undercut by the next administration. (We can say now that he should have had more balls at that time, but again, had he done anything more than he did at the time, you GOP wolves would have been howling like crazy.)

The fact is that the Clintons left a detailed plan of action for dealing with al Qaeda, which the Bushies stuck in a drawer while they spent the spring and summer of 2001 pissing off everybody on the planet with missile defense. They also ignored numerous memos and pleas for attention from Richard Clarke, the CIA and other sources–including intel that Arabs were attending flight schools in the U.S. but didn't seem interested in learning how to land the planes. You can spin it all as furiously as you want, but it's laughable to attempt to absolve Bush's large share of blame for 9/11 happening on his watch.

History will not be kind to him, or to those who enabled him and elected him to a second term.